On the 5th May, Corbyn’s Labour Party will face its first electoral test in the form of the local elections. The immediate internally rooted debates that follow will be fought over how to assess Labour’s performance. Corbyn’s supporters have been keen to downplay Labour’s chances in the run-up and will look to remain upbeat, regardless of the outcome. Those to the right will be seeking to apply pressure on a leader they have been critical of from the outset and gain some traction. At this stage, it seems likely that Corbyn and the left maintain a strong enough base in both members and unions to weather this storm. Beyond this though, such an episode will likely bring home the need for the left to press ahead with organisational reforms in order to secure their position inside the party and develop their ‘movement’ vision. Through this, they will be hoping to give their chance at the helm the time they believe it needs to reap reward and stave off any challenges from the ‘moderates’.

Labour’s current internal politics are highly factionalised in a way that is very much reminiscent of the 1980s. This makes organisational questions all the more fraught (and all the more pressing), as the sides wrangle to retain influence in the context of current debates and against the backdrop of history. On the left, Momentum and its supporters have been the subject of news coverage and internal debate since the leadership elections with their robust backing of the Corbyn project. Older groups, like the centre-left Labour First, are gearing themselves up for the internal scuffles ahead with their opposition to Momentum, its activists and Corbynism itself. As if all this wasn’t sign enough of growing internal strife, another internal grouping named ‘Consensus’ was established at the end of the last month, explicitly aimed at providing a platform for the fostering of some kind of functional unity between the opposing sides. This is a messy picture from which Corbyn and those around him will be looking to emerge more secure and, surely, with a consolidated influence over Labour’s politics in the longer term.

As it stands, the party bears the organisational marks of successive years of gradual but far-reaching change. After the height of Labour left influence in the early 1980s where they managed to bring in the mandatory reselection of sitting MPs and the Electoral College for leadership selection, the successive leaderships of Kinnock, Smith and Blair saw through substantial changes to the mechanisms of the party in key areas. From the late 80s, the party leadership had the power to intervene in the candidate shortlists in national by-elections. The role of ordinary ‘arm-chair’ members was gradually elevated through the spread of One-Member-One-Vote balloting for key party positions and candidate selection more generally, as the activist dominated general committees were increasingly side-lined. The structural position of the trade unions was also gradually changed as their weighting in the Electoral College for leadership contests and in conference was reduced and their block vote abolished. All of this was conducted in the name of modernisation and with a view to empowering the ‘ordinary rank-and-file’, who were seen as being more politically aligned with the leadership than activists. Much of this was opposed by the Labour left.

After the eruption of the Falkirk selection scandal in 2013, Ed Miliband stepped directly into these organisational shoes and continued to look for new ways to engage with and involve individual members from the unions and from outside the party, all the while keeping key functions such as policy-making under central control. The consequence of Ed’s intervention was the establishment of the new semi-open primary system for electing the Labour leader, alongside the introduction of an opt-in for individual union members who wished to see any part of their union membership fees end up in the coffers of the Labour Party. The ultimate result of this new election system, contrary to years of reform that sought to generate a more moderate and less activist-dominated party, was Corbyn’s surge to victory on a tide of left-wing support.

This paradoxical outcome presents a set of questions that the Labour left have had little influence over in preceding years. All of the signs thus far are that they will seek to seize this opportunity and make their mark, just as they did in the early ‘80s. An obvious target for Corbyn and the Labour left is to try to reduce the number of nominations a leadership candidate requires from the PLP to stand in a contest. Such a change could leave the left more able to field candidates that the members and supporters who voted for Corbyn would again be willing to support. The more interesting questions will come when considering how the Labour left might seek to reshape other key parts of party functions, especially given their historic opposition to the individualisation of Labour politics and support for collective political practices.

From the outset, Corbyn has been keen to emphasise his credentials as the mouthpiece of a ‘new movement’ and there has been talk of reviewing the policy-making process of the party in order to involve much more directly the tide of members that Jeremy harnessed in his leadership campaign. But, for the left, the direct balloting of members has an awkward history in terms of identity, if not in the immediate power politics of today’s situation. Any moves to further extend the direct involvement of members in policy-making processes, through the use of methods like e-platforms, would be transformational in the political character of the Labour left and see this section of the party seize the mantle of more individualised party democracy for the first time.

Such a contradiction doesn’t necessarily make such a change less likely, given the pressing nature of the factional power battles at play.  That said, it does make for interesting viewing in the wider context of a left-wing Labour seeking to establish its credibility through a clear commitment to a particular version of a principled Labour tradition. Whilst in other areas Corbyn and his core group of supporters are seeking to carve out a political distinctiveness rooted in ‘true’ socialist values, the organisational battles within may be the first area in which a genuinely new synthesis will be seen, as they attempt to reimagine what left-wing Labour politics looks like as the new benefactors of a particular style of internal democracy from which they were never intended to reap reward.

Jake Watts is an ESRC funded doctoral researcher in the politics department at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on organisational reform in the British Labour Party from 1979 until the present day. He tweets @JakeTW91.

Image: Danny PiG